There are three words that capture the current feelings of some state income tax reformers: "Coulda, shoulda, woulda."

At the start of 2013, legislative leaders of North Carolina, Nebraska and Louisiana all called for the repeal of their states' income taxes and the expansion of their consumption taxes. Two weeks after tax day, and they have all since abandoned their respective plans -- North Carolina just today.

The reasons for these reversals are varied, but they all share a similar thread: Political opposition effectively killed any hopes for full reform. Yet that hasn't stopped some enterprizing governors and politicians from pursuing tax reform with a different -- and more incremental -- approach via income tax cuts.

Regardless of which path states end up taking, the turn away from full repeal is a shame. A growing body of economic research shows that income tax elimination paired with a shift to a broad-based consumption tax has the potential to dramatically improve a state's economy.

Consider a few examples. North Carolina's Civitas Institute recently conducted a study that found that this reform would have made the past decade more of a golden age than a failed one. Total personal income could have been a full $25 billion higher -- as much as $2,600 per person per year -- while job growth would have exploded to the tune of an extra 378,000 positions.

It's a similar story in Louisiana, where the Pelican Institute for Public Policy released a comprehensive study of Gov. Jindal's reform plan a mere two weeks before he abandoned it. He should have waited -- Pelican estimated job growth exceeding five figures annually and additional business investment that surpassed $100 million in the first year alone.

Unfortunately, the opponents of reform took the initiative where reformers did not. From the outset, they were able to capture the public's attention with hysterical claims about how eliminating the income tax and expanding the sales tax privileges the wealthy while fleecing the poor.

It's a powerful rhetorical tool, but the research doesn't support it. In North Carolina, we found that the economic growth that follows on the heels of reform is actually most heavily concentrated in low-income households and families. Case in point: The additional job growth would have gone a long way towards addressing our fifth-worst in the nation 9.2% unemployment rate.

Thankfully, the lack of success in 2013 doesn't mean that this issue is a complete political non-starter for the future. Governors and legislators looking to improve their economies without rocking the reform boat may instead turn to simple income tax cuts, rather than full repeals.

This is the path that legislative leaders in North Carolina's state Senate announced this morning. Elsewhere, Indiana's Mike Pence wants a 10% cut, although the state's legislature may halve this. Similar movements are afoot in New Mexico and Arkansas, while Jindal asked Louisiana's legislature to figure out some way to reduce the state's income tax burden. Most importantly, Kansas' Sam Brownback deserves praise for slashing his state's income tax while insisting that the state should eventually abandon the tax altogether.

In other words, the friends of income tax reform shouldn't lose hope. Other states featuring no personal income taxes serve as a model of what can be accomplished. These nine states -- as diverse as Washington, Texas and New Hampshire -- perennially outperform their neighbors, with annual economic growth over the last decade outpacing the rest of the nation by half a percentage point. And for those states with no corporate income taxes, this jumps to a full percentage point of additional annual growth.

These numbers don't lie, even if the politics surrounding tax reform are less certain. Yet even in the face of continued political opposition, income tax reformers have changed their strategy. In the process, they've made tax reform a question of "when" and "how," rather than "if."

Francis DeLuca is the President of the Civitas Institute, North Carolina's free-market think tank.

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